Stop relying on other people

One of the things I’m witnessing lately is a lot of people who spend most of their social time complaining. “The government didn’t do …”, “My parents didn’t do …”, “My boss isn’t fair…”, “The weather…”, “Housing prices…”. Avoid these people like the plague they are. Relatives, lovers, employers, regardless, they are toxic. I’m referring to the perpetual complainers, although the anecdotal ones are worth a review as well.

We live in the best time ever to be alive. If you’re privileged enough to be reading this, you likely have an internet connection. Which means you can learn anything, for free. You also have full access to the attention economy. No one needs to know your age, or gender, or ethnicity, or name, if you don’t want to share them — yet you can make millions of dollars US, from your keyboard.

Spending your time complaining about things you can’t control helps nothing — no one cares. Only the other losers in your life will listen — those who spend their time doing things instead of complaining, are busy doing.

What you likely can control is upping your skills, to make yourself more in demand. If you spent 20 minutes less per day watching t.v. or reading social media, and picked one thing to learn, in 3 months you could likely do that thing with a basic proficiency. In a year or two, you could be paid for it.

Let’s say for example you’re interested in computers. You could choose a language like elixir, or R, or voice, or solidity, or hacking; if you dove into one solid year of study you could likely be making $50k-100k within a year (at the time of writing this — all of these languages will be popular for at least 5 more years). Unless you’re going to be a doctor, lawyer, or engineer, I have no idea why anyone would go to post-secondary anymore — unless your parents are paying for it, you won a scholarship, or you want to learn how to learn, as you can’t figure it out on your own.

I live in one of the most expensive cities in my country. When I can’t afford to live here any more, I will leave; but you won’t hear me complaining about the housing prices here, even though that seems to be the trendiest things to do conversationally right now, if not complaining about the weather, which is one of the least cold areas in the country. I can’t control the housing prices (or the weather), so I focus on what I can change. I can change my situation to one where I can afford to live here, and/or spend my spare time learning politics and being engaged where I can affect housing price change — if that’s an issue that I’m passionate about.

You should not complain about anything that you can’t change, or don’t have a solution for.

It’s of course worth noting not everyone has this privilege; the longer you take in life to build discipline in self-reliance, the harder it is to have time to spend on that, as well as the harder it is to form that habit. For example, if you’re a single parent, this is more difficult. Also if you have special needs of some variety, you might not have access elsewhere. Like everything, this is just a generalized suggestion based on the many, grossly privileged people whom spend their time complaining, most notably on social media. If you’re going to spend your privileged time complaining, complain to the source or work towards change based on the solutions you support. You’ll soon see that’s the tribe you’re meant to be with.